Tony O'Connor Has Turned His Tragedy Into a Good Life

Friday

Feb 22, 2013 at 4:39 PM

What do you call a stand-up comedian with no legs? Tony O'Connor. How can a border guard carry a gun and still be unarmed? When he's Tony O'Connor. It would seem callous to make jokes about O'Connor, a triple amputee, if not for the fact that he has already made most of the jokes himself.

By GARY WHITETHE LEDGER

LAKELAND | What do you call a stand-up comedian with no legs?

Tony O'Connor.

How can a border guard carry a gun and still be unarmed?

When he's Tony O'Connor.

It would seem callous to make jokes about O'Connor, a triple amputee, if not for the fact that he has already made most of the jokes himself.

O'Connor, a winter resident of Lakeland, draws heavily on his 28 years as an immigration inspector at the Vermont-Canada border in his stand-up comedy act. For O'Connor, though, the act doesn't end when he leaves the stage.

There might as well be a drummer in the kitchen playing rim shots when O'Connor entertains a guest at the home he and his wife share at Cypress Lakes, a retirement community in North Lakeland.

O'Connor, 62, is relentlessly upbeat, referring to the electrical accident that cost him his lower legs and his entire right arm as the second-best thing that ever happened to him.

The first?

"Marrying this girl," he said, indicating Gigi, his wife of 37 years.

After a beat, O'Connor added, "She often says she's only slightly better than an electrical shock."

Ba-doom tshing.

NEARLY DIED

The transforming moment of O'Connor's life occurred on a snowy afternoon in February 1966, when he and a friend snuck into a freight yard, not far from where they both lived in Brooklyn. O'Connor, then 16, climbed onto the roof of a parked boxcar and scooped up a snowball. As he reared back to hurl the snowball at his friend, the back of his right hand touched an electrical cable.

In an instant, 11,000 volts of electricity surged into O'Connor's body.

He said he was declared dead on arrival at the hospital before doctors revived him. O'Connor said he vividly recalls the blissful state that enveloped him in the moments when he seemed to be dead.

"I was not out-of-body," he said. "I didn't look down at myself, nothing like that. I just remember total, 100 percent nirvana, calm peacefulness. If that's what dying's like, it was great. When they brought me back is when I started feeling the pain again."

O'Connor spent three months in the hospital. He required 25 operations, as doctors amputated his legs below the knees and his entire right arm.

The result might have seemed worse than death to some 16-year-olds. One night in the hospital, though, O'Connor came to a resolution.

"I promised God if I lived through it I would never feel sorry for myself," he said. "I would turn this bad thing into something good. I would hypnotize myself and convince myself this is one of the best things that ever happened to me."

O'Connor said his parents and doctors wanted him to attend a rehabilitative school. Instead, six months after the accident, O'Connor bolted from the place, walked seven blocks on his prosthetic legs and took a subway to his old high school. After school ended, he walked five blocks home to learn that police officers had been searching for him.

One of O'Connor's closest childhood friends is Henry Gross, a founding member of the band Sha Na Na who had a Top-10 hit in 1976 with his song "Shannon."

"It's like he said, ‘OK. No legs, one arm. OK. What do we do tomorrow?'?" Gross said. "Some people go through all kinds of trauma or tragedy in their lives, and in very many cases it defines them," Gross said. "In Tony's case, it's irrelevant. It's hard to say that; of course it's not irrelevant, but for all practical purposes ...

"A lot of people have not had the tragic moment that he had and have not lived one-billionth of what he has. So I don't see his life as tragic. He's absolutely just Tony.''

O'Connor seems to take pleasure in fielding questions about how he lost his arm. The queries give the legless guy a chance to pull the legs of others.

Sometimes he spins a yarn about working at an alligator farm and trying to impress a girl by wrestling the biggest and meanest gator. And sometimes he says he had a habit of chewing his fingernails that got out of control.

When some children recently queried him as he shopped, O'Connor told them he lost his arm because he asked too many questions as a kid.

During a visit to Kennedy Space Center 20 years ago, O'Connor attracted the attention of a man who eventually followed him into a restroom and asked how he lost his arm.

Gigi didn't realize Tony was missing his lower legs until their third date, when he informed her in typical fashion. As they prepared for a night swim in a pond near his home, O'Connor handed his prosthetic legs to his date and asked her to take them to the car.

"I thought for sure she'd be gone then, but she's still in a state of shock," O'Connor said. "When she comes around, she'll leave me."

Gigi, who serves as the straight woman in O'Connor's non-stop routine, said she is hardly the only one to be fooled.

"Nine times out of 10, people don't even know he doesn't have legs," she said.

In the late 1970s, O'Connor was trying to get a job with the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) when he learned that President Jimmy Carter was urging the private sector to hire citizens with disabilities.

He said he spent his few remaining dollars sending telegrams to the White House, pitching himself as a disabled man eager to work for his country. He said someone from the White House called the regional commissioner of the INS, and O'Connor was called in for an interview and hired.

After two years in Maine, he transferred to the border station at North Troy, Vt., about 500 feet south of the Canadian border on a two-lane highway.

In those innocent days before the 9/11 attacks, O'Connor often worked alone at the station. At one point, the INS changed its agents' weapons from revolvers to automatic pistols, and O'Connor said the local range officer, who didn't like him, claimed he couldn't handle an automatic.

O'Connor wrote a letter to a supervisor asserting that he could work a Rubik's cube and play racquetball and was licensed to drive a stick-shift vehicle. He said he only had trouble driving when he was eating a hamburger, French fries and a shake and tried to wave at someone while turning.

"It went all the way to the commissioner of the Immigration Service," O'Connor said. "I got a call from the commissioner. He said, ‘You use whatever gun you want to; that's the funniest letter I ever read.'?"

For the record, O'Connor never had to fire his weapon on the job. He has some amusing stories about close calls, but you'll have to catch his stand-up act to hear those.

TEEING OFF

The O'Connors, with help from Gigi's late father, built their own house in Vermont. O'Connor, a father of four, laughs as he describes awkwardly hauling 4-by-8 sheets of plywood up a ladder.

One day in 1986, Gigi urged a reluctant Tony to join some friends who were heading out to play golf. O'Connor, who swings a club backhanded, soon became addicted to the game.

He boasts a best round of 78, generally shoots in the 80s and has three holes-in-one.

He's just as good at racquetball, a game he began playing 25 years ago. He has won tournaments against players without disabilities and once embarrassed a Vermont TV reporter who expected to beat him easily.

O'Connor's plans for next summer include hiking to the summit of Mount Washington, a 6,288-foot peak in New Hampshire.

If nothing else, he figures the experience will give him new material for his comedy act.

Though he strives for self-reliance, O'Connor admits that some things are difficult to do with one arm.

He said he struggled with the trim work when he and Gigi were building their house.

And spreading butter on bread isn't easy for him.

Also: "I'm a lousy guitar player."

O'Connor retired from the INS in 2006, and friends persuaded him to enter the 2008 Vermont gubernatorial campaign.

He ran as the candidate of the self-created Cheap Renewable Energy Party, and his late father-in-law provided his campaign slogan: "I haven't got a leg to stand on, but I'm running anyway."

STAND-UP GUY

One night in 2007, O'Connor ventured on stage at a Port Charlotte night club during an open-mike session to do a stand-up comedy routine. He won the contest and has since done about 300 shows, by his estimation, mostly at retirement communities.

In his profanity-free act, O'Connor riffs about married life and tells elaborate, often embellished versions of actual stories from his life.

"I've seen it hundreds of times, and I still sit there and laugh," Gigi said of the act.

Gross, who now splits time between Nashville and Naples, said he admires O'Connor for not marketing himself as The Triple-Amputee Comedian.

"I think Tony could play real hard on the fact that he's an amputee," Gross said. "If he was a really vulgar self-promoter, he could have parlayed that into a walk on Jimmy Kimmel (TV show) by now. It's not what he's about. If he's funny he'll get there; if he's not, he won't. He's not going to go hobbling up there, begging for a shot. That's not how he rolls, and that's why I love him."

O'Connor, who calls himself a motivational speaker, also does appearances at schools, using humor to reinforce his message. He tells students that all of them will encounter misfortunes, even if most never endure anything as traumatic as his accident, and that happiness depends upon our reaction to disappointments.

He paraphrased Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor and stoic philosopher: "Misfortune nobly born is good fortune."

O'Connor had a stroke two years ago. The episode affected the left side of his brain, the part that controls the right side of his body. Noting that he has no right arm and no ankles, the part of the body often most affected by such a neurological attack, O'Connor refers to it as "my stroke of luck."

Driving around Cypress Lakes in his Chevy Metro, O'Connor deftly shifted gears with his left hand while working the clutch with his prosthetic left leg.

"I truly enjoy being an amputee," he said. "It's a fun thing to be. Maybe I've convinced myself on it over the years, but I don't mind."

He later added: "If life got any better and I didn't say it, God would strike me down."

[ Gary White can be reached at gary.white@theledger.com or 863-802-7518. ]

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